


And I Hear a Voice Whisper, I'll Meet You Right There

by sa00harine



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Comedian Richie Tozier, Coming Out, Fluff, Gay Panic, M/M, Recovery, Writer Bill Denbrough, patty blum kinda rocks, stan is an accountant what else is new
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:22:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22011004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sa00harine/pseuds/sa00harine
Summary: This is for @stoizersecretsanta on Tumblr!Flashes of Stanley Uris, Richie Tozier, and Bill Denbrough's lives as they grow up, leave, and return to Derry, Maine.
Relationships: Bill Denbrough/Richie Tozier, Bill Denbrough/Richie Tozier/Stanley Uris, Bill Denbrough/Stanley Uris, Richie Tozier/Stanley Uris
Comments: 9
Kudos: 66





	And I Hear a Voice Whisper, I'll Meet You Right There

**Author's Note:**

> hey! I'm so sorry this was out much later than expected!!  
> I started writing it and then things got bad mentally and I still think this fic is a bit of a mess, but I sincerely hope you enjoy it!  
> small heads up!! tw: drowning, internalized homophobia
> 
> merry (late) christmas everyone and a very happy hanukkah <3

They were the lucky seven. They’d always be the lucky seven- until the end of time and beyond that, even. Their faith ran that deep. Their faith dove deep, deep into the bottom of the clubhouse Ben Hanscom had made them that summer. And higher, higher than any one of Stanley Uris’ favorite birds could fly. It ran across the earth, to Richie Tozier’s lonesome flat in LA, California, to Mike Hanlon’s rented room in the Derry library. Though long subdued, faith thrummed ever presently in Beverly Marsh’s veins when the skin on top of them would grow irritated and red. It thrummed the same whenever Eddie Kaspbrak would swallow down pills he knew deep down didn’t really have any real effect. Though invisible, though fickle, their faith never left them. 

But it did start somewhere. It began with a gloomy morning and the uncertain death of a little boy wearing a yellow raincoat. It became scarce when an older boy looked away from his bedroom window for no longer than two minutes, and when the anguished shrieks of his parents summoned him from his bed. It wavered for a while, and then it came back as it always does in the faces of the boy’s friends. Their faith began with Bill Denbrough.

Said boy paces, tugging on the collar of his flannel and murmuring under his breath. The rest watch, scattered in the dry grass that grew in the front yard of the house on Neibolt street. 

“We can’t go in,” Stanley says. “It’s dangerous.” 

Eddie is quick to bandwagon. “There’s probably all kinds of mold in there. bleh,  _ yuck.  _ You’ll get sick if you go near mildew. Guys, Stan’s right. We can’t just go in without, I dunno, gloves or something.” 

“And you haven’t even mentioned the fucking clown in there.” Richie bites his nails. Stan and Eddie make eye contact before Stan takes Richie’s hand and holds it away from his mouth. 

“You haven’t even washed your hands,” Eddie says. Richie looks trepidatiously at his fingers before slipping them from Stan’s and into his pocket. 

Bill’s still standing on the top step, staring intently at the door. “It’s in th-there.” 

“I don’t know, Bill,” says Mike, face pinched in hestiance. “I’m not sure if this is a good idea.”

Beverly nudges him, then shrugs. “It’s better to run towards something than away, isn’t it?” She looks back at them, green eyes piercing and firey hair in messy tufts. She looks radiant, albeit afraid, absolutely radiant and terribly brave. 

Ben’s the first to agree. Bill doesn’t move. He doesn’t say a word as the rest gradually respond to Beverly. 

“Who’s guh-gonna g-g-go in w-with me?” 

For once, Richie isn’t the first to volunteer for something. He gets picked anyway, and they all see Stan snag his arm and whisper  _ be careful  _ before Richie’s lead away by Eddie. To the door they go, looming, dark, and full of spiderwebs. 

Stan breaks into tears when they’re gone. But he breaks into a run when he hears them start to scream. 

Just an hour later, Eddie was rushed to the hospital with an arm that didn’t look quite right, and Richie had ridden home on his bike with his nose bleeding the whole way. One by one, they go. Ben, then Mike. Beverly follows Bill after he channels his outrage through his bike, slamming his feet onto the pedals with fervor. Stan has no doubt she’ll be able to calm him down. 

Stanley walks home, legs far too shaky to carry him effectively on a bike, head down with his curls in his face. They’re heavy with dust and he smells like whatever Eddie said-  _ mildew  _ and the suffocating stench that accompanied Neibolt. 

He considers stopping at the synagogue. It’s only a block further than his house and perhaps he could use the peace and quiet. 

But the painting’s there, with its soulless eyes and unsymmetrical face. 

-

When they finally defeat It, it doesn’t feel like a victory.

There’s blood all over his face, and it stings and stings and  _ stings.  _ Every loser has frantically apologised to him at least twice. Stan knows it isn’t their fault It was able to get him, and replies a quiet  _ it’s okay  _ every time. And it  _ is  _ okay now, but it doesn’t feel like it yet. The fear hadn’t left, and neither had the lingering dread that plagued them. Maybe, Stan thought, that part would never leave. 

They all walk their bikes home this time, afraid that if they’re not over-cautiously huddling together, It’ll come back. Richie jokes, Eddie yells at him, Ben and Beverly idly talk. But still, it’s subdued. It should have felt like a weight was lifted off of their backs. It didn’t. Bill was still sniffling and Stan and Mike shared frequent disheartened stares.

Instead, it feels more like a reprieve. Comes a time where Stan can bring himself to stare solidly at the painting in his dad’s office. Comes a time where Stan can walk into the barrens alone without his hands trembling too much. Comes a time where it all fades away into uncertain memories and deja vu. 

They’re sixteen years old now, and the losers club hasn’t officially spoken since the end of their freshman year. Though it was impossible to deny they’d ever have better friends, they’d drifted apart anyway. And now they’d strayed so far to the point where Stan can’t remember just what brought them together in the first place. Or what broke them apart. 

Stanley coops himself up inside the doors of his room, splitting his time between copious hours of studying and reading the Torah as to not disappoint his father. He goes to school, and he comes home. He doesn’t do much more than that. He quits boy scouts, stuffing his sash into a box that was now caked in dust. However, he still goes bird watching on Tuesdays and Thursdays. 

Sometimes, Stan feels like it goes both ways. Something, not quite the birds, but  _ something  _ is watching him. Lying in wait. But before the thought can progress any further, a warbler crosses his vision and he’s fumbling for his bird book.

Richie, his first best friend, is actually the last to leave. But when he goes, he goes leaving a profound emptiness. There’s no jokes for Stan to snap at, or to latch onto with his own straight-faced addition to send Richie into shambles. But there is a single, painfully neon, flower-printed shirt Richie forgot to take on his way out. That finds its way right beside Stanley’s old boy scouts sash, left in that dusty old box. 

A week before the last time Stan talked to Richie, Bill had stayed over at his house. He’d crashed Silver on the ride there, and so he and Stan proceeded to fix it. They’d laughed some and they’d talked some. Not enough, apparently, to keep him close. Silver’s old bell laid entwined with Stan’s sash and Richie’s shirt.

Beverly had gone away with her aunt, Eddie being carted away by his mother who’d grown tired of Derry, and Ben had broadcasted nothing but radio silence and a shadow across the school library carpet. 

And Mike left the farm even less than he used to. 

So Stan went through the motions. Every day. Every week. Every month and every passing year- until the motions stopped being enough and he found himself frozen with a phone in his trembling hand. 

-

Stanley Uris and his roommate Patricia Blum meet during college- at a party Patty’s roommate was hosting and Stan was dragged to against his will. It turned out for the best, as the two had been outcasts among their respective social crowds and had become fast friends. He was calm and insistent enough to balance her flighty nature, and she was spontaneous enough to erode the orderly layer that hid Stan’s ability to let loose. 

Give or take twenty years, and the two lived in a townhouse that was too big for their presences- but they both were able to afford the luxury, thus took full advantage. It was somewhat a symbiotic relationship. Patty was an excellent cook, and on Friday nights they had a long time tradition of eating out, while Stan found solace in logic and numbers. Their bills were taken care of before Patty even got the chance to lay her eyes on them. Neither actively sought anything better than this, really. It was comfortable. They studied together throughout their senior year of college, drilled the other for job interviews, and got along just fine. 

In fact, they were in the middle of putting together the intricate bird puzzle Patty had gotten Stan for his thirty-eighth birthday when the phone rang. She’d jammed a piece where it didn’t fit and he’d pried it out while she laughed. Then they’d found out  _ he  _ was in the wrong and he’d clicked a piece into the wrong niche, creating an opening for error. Stan was just adjusting the area of the puzzle they’d already completed accordingly as Patty got up and headed towards their kitchen. 

“Hello?” He listens, slipping a piece depicting a sparrow’s russet wing in great detail right into place. 

“Oh, okay. Sure! I’ll get him.” Alert, Stan gets off his knees, noting dully how they ache just enough to let him know he’s getting near the age where kneeling on their rug for hours on end isn’t ideal. 

He’s already in the doorway of their spotless kitchen when Patty is sliding towards him, fuzzy socks on the tile colliding with his chest fast. “It’s for you, Stanny.” 

Her arms wrap around him and he gets passed the phone. One arm comes to absentmindedly hug her back while he answers.

“Hello? Stanley Uris speaking.” 

And out from the receiver comes a voice he never could have steeled himself to hear. “Stan!  _ Stan,  _ It’s Mike.”

He blinks rapidly. Red balloons. A blurry painting. Shrill screams. “Mike..? I’m sorry, I don’t..” He knows he sounds nervous. He knows it when Patty shifts, blonde head leaving his chest as she takes a step back, looking at him with round worried doe eyes. 

“Mike Hanlon. From Derry.”

Patty, ever the one who knew Stan better than he knew himself, takes the phone from him before he can drop it. 

_ Who is it?  _ she mouths. He shakes his head, kissing her cheek before prying the phone from her hands. “Mike, hi.” 

“How are you doing, Stan?” His voice is what Stan imagined it would be like when they grew up- smooth and sultry. Calming perhaps, in another circumstance. A horrible reality occurs to him right then. And even before he’s spoken it out loud, he knows it’s true. The rush of adrenaline that goes through him in that moment could have powered a fucking building. 

“ _ It _ ’s back isn’t it?” 

Silence; then eventually, Stan can hear Mike sigh. “Can you be in town by tomorrow night?”

He nods. It takes Stan a minute to remember Mike can’t see him. “Yes, I can.” It’ll be impulsive- and quite expensive, a flight from Atlanta, Georgia to Derry, Maine, but he’d promised, hadn’t he?

“What’s going on?” Patty asks. She’d wrapped her arms around herself and adjusted her clear glasses- a gesture that brought Stan deja vu he didn’t recall the origins of. 

“...will be here around the same time. I already called Bill..” 

“Thanks, Mike. Bye.” 

He hangs up just as Mike’s saying  _ Stan the Man.  _ God, he’d forgotten that allias of his. But maybe he missed it? 

Patty takes the phone then, grip now tight enough so that Stan couldn’t grab it even if he wanted to. “If you’ll explain,” she says. 

“An old friend,” Stan sighs. “He’s from Derry. Something came up and-” 

She’s shaking her head. He and Patty don’t get into disagreements often-  _ ever,  _ really. The last time they fell out of tune was a long story- one Patty’s mother laughed about whenever she would visit. The two of them wanted a pet, and Stanley insisted they’d better prepare. So he’d made them take care of an egg for a week. It was summary when they’d both cracked their eggs on the first day in the middle of a heist to sabotage the other. Great minds think alike, Stan supposed at the time. They’d argued a little after, just out of the unspoken realization they were skipping around- neither would be good with any pet, may it be a dog, cat, bird, reptile, or gerbil. Stan was always at his accounting firm, having a bad habit of taking extra hours, and Patty always spends extra time at her desk plotting out lesson plans for the school she teaches at. Whatever time they’d be able to scrape together, it wouldn’t be enough. They hardly had enough time to relax as it was. 

But tonight, her cheeks are flushed and her eyes are worried. Or is it him? Stanley can’t see straight, and his hands are shaking so wildly that his fingernails make noises against the counter he’s gripping. 

“Stan, you’re about to pass out. What happened?” 

"I have to go," he says, aghast. "I have to go." 

Patty follows him as he rushes out of the kitchen. She tugs on his arm. “ _ Where?  _ Tell me what’s wrong. Please.” 

He sighs- it gets caught in his throat and comes out as a dry sob. Could he? Could he even begin to face again the paintings and the sewers and the manical aughter that sounds like  _ it’s right fucking behind him oh my god-  _ He can’t. “I have to go,” he tells her hollowly. 

“Fine.” Patty puts her hands on her hips. “I’ll  _ go  _ too.” 

“No!” 

She’d finally gotten him to whirl around, face gone more pale at the unbearable prospect of willingly bringing her in harm’s way. He holds his arms out in surrender and sighs. “Sit down, please.” 

She glares, but does after a charged moment. Stan leaves to his room, panicking all the way. Down the hall is a lightswitch they neglect because it doesn’t get dark enough and they’re adults who aren’t usually afraid of the dark. Tonight Stan fears greatly the darkness and what may lie in it, so he flips on the light as he marches to his room like a soldier after his draft. 

What he emerges with is a box he had lugged by his side through college. He’d never really known why- just pegged it up to sentimentality and opening it at ‘the right time.’ As life turned out, the right time was now. From Mike’s phone call to the inherent the draw of the box. Something like what Pandora’s Box radiated, he felt like. 

Stan wordlessly puts it on the table between them. Patty watches as he opens it and quietly coughs as dust floods into the air. He waves it out of the way. “My god..” she hears him say under his breath. 

He removes a bell, first. One from a bike. It’s small and blue and caked with the dust from decades untouched. He rings it- the noise is deafening in the uncharacteristically quiet apartment. Stanley rings it again and suddenly he can hear more. He can hear the hollering of a deviant boy, and see said boy clinging onto another boy’s back- both sharing the seat of a large bike. One has pursed lips and faraway eyes, concentrating on the road ahead; and the other has a toothy grin and his arms wrapped around the other’s waist. He can hear the bell muffled from the pillow over his head, and see a boy standing outside his window from his bedroom, talking to his parents in a small voice. And when he rings the bell once more, he hears a name. It was Bill Denbrough, clear as day, as if nothing had changed at all. 

So he takes the courage he had never been able to muster, unlike Bill, who was fearless to him- to everyone, and tells Patty, voice unsteady. 

-

“You expect me to believe that?” Her voice is so small and heavy and it cracks imperfectly on a few words. 

He can’t answer right because he doesn’t expect her to believe a thing he’s said. Especially when he can hardly believe it himself. 

“I think we need to call someone, and  _ not  _ whoever that was earlier. Stan, that’s just- this is insane.”

“I know,” he says. 

She holds his hands and brings them to her lap. “But you’ve never lied to me.”

Her intense blue eyes bore into his own then. He stares back emptily. His soul he had bared- he had nothing else to give. 

She seems to decide on something. Patty reaches for the box again, and before he can stop her, she pulls out a tacky bright blue shirt printed with red and pink hibiscus flowers. Ironically, it used to drown its wearer in its long sleeves, but it seemed tiny now. 

“Did you wear this as a kid?” She laughs, unexpectedly. It’s not light and it’s not happy, but it’s enough to bring them from the looming shadows of their previous conversation. And the sun seems to return from its brief eclipse when Stan yanks it from her hands with a sharp, embarrassed  _ no!  _

Patty hums. “Then why d’you have it?” 

“It’s an old friend’s.” He discovers that he means what he says. Richie was the first to teach him what friendship was- joking back and forth until they both couldn’t breathe let alone look at each other, reading through the Torah while Stanley was trying to memorize it and mispronouncing the words so that they come out as some lewd joke, bicycle races that resulted in Stan fussing over his scraped knees and Richie agreeing to walk their bikes home and ask Stan what the different birds they saw were. Sometimes he gave them voices, too. Stan remembered enjoying those bits a lot- Wise Mr. Owl, Picky Pigeon, and Richie’s favorite at the time, Grandma Crow- very obviously based off of the foundations of Mrs. Kaspbrak. Just add a sloppy Boston accent, chewing noises, and the word  _ schmutz.  _

“The one who called?” Patty asks. 

“No,” Stan replies. “That was Mike.” 

She nods, recalling his name from Stan’s retelling. “So, whose shirt do you have that you kept for twenty-seven years?” 

“Richie’s.” 

“Is he gonna be there too?” 

“I don’t know.” Stan doesn’t. He can’t picture any of them dropping whatever lives they built for this. He’s having a hard time even comprehending that he still has to buy a plane ticket. 

Patty puts down the shirt. It falls next to Silver’s old bell on their dining room table. The puzzle once meticulously assembled was now forgotten, stray pieces lying alone and oblivious under the box. Stan watches as Patty reaches in again and blows the dust off of his old boy scouts sash. She smiles at the patches there- one with binoculars, a few with different animals, and one with a magnifying glass. “This looks more like you. You did boy scouts, didn’t you, Stan?”  
“Nine years of it,” he says. “Wish it could have prepared me for this.” 

She purses her lips. “You should get a flight soon.” 

He blinks in surprise. “You’re not at all- you’re okay with this?” 

“Well, no,” Patty says honestly. “I’m confused and I’m half-expecting to wake up from a dream, but I’m not gonna keep you from seeing your friends and beating the shit out of a childhood monster. You do you, Stanny.” 

Stan smiles at her, amused even in his frazzled state. “You would like them, my friends.” 

“So whatever happens back there, bring them here when it’s over so you can introduce them to me.” Patty says it so earnestly that it brings tears to his eyes. He doesn’t remember much- not yet. Just small glimpses are crossing his mind really, but is there-  _ could there  _ be a future where they make it out? They did it once, maybe-

“I will,” he says involuntarily.

She seems satisfied, and sits by his side while he purchases a seat on a flight that leaves early tomorrow morning. Patty runs her hands through the hair at the bottom of his neck when his shoulders start tensing at the words  _ Derry, Maine  _ displayed on his screen. 

She grabs his hands when they shake too much to properly fold clothes into his suitcase and listens to him jabber about how they’re supposed to be color coordinated. And when asks her to stay by his bedside because he isn’t sure if he’ll sleep  _ or survive the night,  _ given the circumstances, Patty does. He hears her leave eventually- just after she presses a chaste kiss to his forehead, her footsteps loud on their wooden floor because she tried to slide in her socks and she nearly slipped. 

Stanley swears, if he ever had to marry a woman, he’d choose her.

-

The airport is greater part people than seats, so that leaves Stan loitering by the cafe where he’s just downed his third coffee in a row. He takes it bitter, not because he’s concerned with staying awake, but because he doesn’t think he can get  _ awake enough.  _

Derry, Maine and all the oddities it entails is one two and a half hour flight away and the plane boards in thirty minutes. Obviously he can’t opt out now, because Mike’s texted him the location of the restaurant where he’s arranged their upcoming meeting. 

What really pysches him out are the replies. There’s Ben, first, with a proper thanks and see you soon. Bill next, with only a single exclamation mark, and then Eddie with a characteristically long-winded text detailing the state of the ‘germ-infested’ airport bathroom, and furthermore, the mysterious stain on the side of his plane seat. But he does eventually add a small  _ hi guys  _ to which Ben and Bill offered curt replies, Mike too, but way more enthusiastic. Just before he boards Stan gets a nagging in his chest that results in him typing something there as well. 

_ Hi. Boarding now. I’ll see you all tonight. Be safe.  _

Nothing ever came from Richie, or Beverly, he thinks to himself as the plane starts to move. His seat is cramped and the seatbelt feels suffocating and his phone doesn’t connect, so he keeps the other two losers in the front of his mind throughout the flight. 

A bit strangely, there aren’t any words from them by the time he’s on the ground. Stan wonders if they’re showing up or not.

-

The Derry Townhouse hasn’t changed a bit. Stan isn’t sure if that’s good or not. The wallpaper is still peeling and the rooms are still empty. The hallways still feel like they’re watching him, constricting around his every step and waiting to swallow him whole. 

In kinder words, it’s nice to feel welcomed back home, Stan thinks to himself a hint cynically as he splashes water onto his face in the hotel bathroom. 

It’s just past two in the afternoon. So he’s got plenty of time to meander around town before Mike and the others meet him at- Stan checks his phone- Jade of the Orient. 

Despite the crawling sensation that hadn’t left him since receiving Mike’s call, Stanley works up the nerve to leave the stuffy room and actually step into the town engraved with the long-faded footprints of another Stanley Uris, long ago. He passes a chain of stores in a shopping center that had been revamped and thus looked unfamiliar. It only occurred to Stan now that even if it felt like home, home had moved on just as he had. The one single link between new Stan and new Derry was the sinking feeling in his stomach when he approached a landmark he finally recognized- the synagogue. 

-

When he pushes open the creaky doors, he finds it empty. But it still looks the same with the exception of modern-age posters hung by the door. His heart softens when he spots one in particular- a summoning for jewish lgbtq+ youth. Then his heart sinks right back down again when he sees what’s written in red pen at the top right corner of the page. In chickenscratch it reads precisely  _ faggots go to hell.  _

Stan looks around and then discretely peels back the tape on the paper. He folds it and stuffs it in his pocket. And he’ll never really know why he did it or why he felt like he absolutely  _ had  _ to do it, but later on, definitely, he’s glad he did. 

The pews are dusty- not as dusty as the Derry Townhouse as a whole, but enough so to remind him the greater majority of this town was either a Christian or Catholic. He takes a seat where he used to sit as a kid. If he closes his eyes, he can almost believe that nothing ever changed. Essentially, it’s the same. The seats are just as stiff as they used to be and he can still hear the fountain running water outside.

What changed was him- his hair had grown in dark and he stopped being afraid of the dark by the time he was in college. But it was back now. Stan’s eyes were fixated on the dark corner of the synagogue and at first he inwardly thwarted himself for regressing back into immediate fear, but something  _ was  _ moving. He was sure of it. It was as if the darkness had a heartbeat. Every few seconds the shadow would reach towards the end of his pew and then repel backwards. Stan squints. 

There’s a face there. There’s definitely a face. A melted- godforsaken- 

“ _ Staaanleyyy..”  _ It’s the painting. The lady. And it’s worse than he remembered. All unproportional and creepy-crawly and with startlingly white, blank eyes that somehow manage to capture him without pupils. He scrambles out of the pew, falling butt-first on the ground and moving himself backwards with his hands. 

It keeps coming closer, hunkering after him and leaning downwards into his space. “ _ Are you sccaaaaared? Are you afraid?”  _

He squeezes his eyes shut, rubbing at his face like he can still pretend this all isn’t real. Stan hears it keep talking- telling him he’s weak and that he shouldn’t have come back, but more importantly that  _ he dies today.  _ But he shakes his head, insiting to himself that it still isn’t real. That stable semblance is broken when a drip of something falls onto his nose. 

“ _ I’m real, Stanley. I’m real, oh-ho-ho yeah, but are  _ you?” 

Two more drips fall. One for each eyelid. 

“ _ Are you even going to live to see your friends tonight? Oh, are they even going to live to see you? You’ll be dead on arrival, ha-hah!”  _ The mocking voice had left the vicinity of a female octave and had become deafening- though familiar. 

His eyes open just in time to see the ceiling crumble. And it isn’t foundation or plaster that falls onto him. It happens to be water, and it’s more like he’s falling  _ in.  _

Just as Stanley’s arms move to start to struggle, as his legs kick aimlessly just to move and  _ get out,  _ he’s frozen in water that isn’t anything but icy icy cold. He closes his mouth and duly notes that there isn’t a floor underneath him anymore. He’s drifting. He can see wood alongside him passing him by. What happened, a flood? A tsunami? They’re in Maine. The likelihood of a flood has been otherwise pretty low since something 2008, Stan’s sure. By now his heart is starting to pound- a flimsy and fickle thing in his chest that more importantly, does not have enough air. A tad more urgently, he struggles in that chills him to his bones. He only sinks deeper. His eyes flutter and for a second, a shocking second, he thinks he sees It watching him with a malicious smile painted across its face. 

Pennywise. 

“ _ Bird boy’s never gonna fly.”  _

And with that last rasp, it’s all gone. It. The water. The caved in ceiling. Stan finds himself writhing on the floor of the synagogue, drenched to his core with a scream on his lips.

-

Having spent an hour and a half of his time being harassed by an eldritch being, Stan decides to show up to dinner early. Surprisingly, he isn’t the only one there. Through the window of his rental car, he spots a man with dark skin sitting on bench just outside the doors of Jade Of The Orient with his nose deep in a book. 

Head blank and fuzzy and empty of what else to do, he honks. Mike jumps. Drops his book, titled  _ A History Of Derry.  _ Stan sees that it’s heavily annotated, including several post it notes peeking from between the pages and a few stray papers which fall out from their place previously tucked behind the cover. 

Instantly guilty, he hastily parks and stumbles out of the car, hands already raised to help as Mike kneels on the ground, dog-earing his page and stuffing the papers back into place. 

“Mike,  _ Mike,”  _ he says quietly in awe. Mike looked different and the same all at once. There was the smile directed at Stan, almost exactly the one he would show them as a kid- white gleaming teeth behind full lips, and eyes effervescent and bright. 

Before he could comprehend much of anything, he was being crushed in a hug. Mike’s soft button-up shirt met Stanley’s wet hair and he could have sworn for a moment that he was here on his own will. He was here to see the only real friends he’d ever had. Mike’s smile was mouthing at his neck beneath the damp cotton, and he personally thanked God that it felt more real than the entire fiasco at the synagogue. 

Mike pulls back, eyebrows knitted in confusion. “Did you take a dive at the Quarry or something? You’re soaked, man.” But he’s still smiling, so largely that he doesn’t need to tell Stan he missed him. Stan can see it clear as day. And he missed Mike too- he missed all of them without even knowing it. 

But the words register. Stan must have darkened, because Mike’s hands which were still at his shoulders, grip harder. “You okay?” 

“I saw It,” he says. The words come roughly like maybe he’d been more affected by the encounter than he initially thought. “It tried to- there was so much water, and It almost drowned me.” 

“It’s bad Stan, it’s really bad,” says Mike, face solemn. 

He nods. “Have you-” 

“Not yet, but since you already did, I suspect the rest of them are.” 

“Are what?” 

If Mike was walking the line between changed and familiar, than Richie would have been sitting on the face of the cliff where the line began, because for better or for worse, he looked exactly the same. Identical, even, save for the extra gained height. He was lanky, for one, and probably six foot something. But same thick-framed glasses. Same genre of garish wardrobe- today in particular, a mustard yellow shirt littered with crosses and a leather jacket that looked the same brand of greasy as his unkempt hair. 

“Rich,” Mike breathes, smile appearing once again on his face. 

Richie smiles. “Not really, I’d say moderately wealthy.” 

And Stan wants to tell Richie that those are basically synonyms, but as he’s opening his mouth a better idea comes to him. “Moderately wealthy people don’t dress and look like drowned rats.” 

“Oh, woah, okay. The accountant is gonna tell me how to dress,” Richie challenges. “And what the hell, you actually look like a drowned rat.”

He’s opening his mouth to shoot something back, but comes up empty when a chill runs through him, cruelly reminding him that essentially, he was at least drowned. 

“Ladies, ladies,” Mike says, laughter biting at his words. 

They both quiet and in tandem, look at Mike with the same vacant expectancy on their faces. 

“It’s good to see you guys,” Richie says, honesty apparent in his voice. What Stan hadn’t noticed before was just how tired he sounded. If he had to describe it, Richie’s voice sounded different on a level that wasn’t just his age. Fishhooks tugged his tone down into something weary and taut. For the first time, he wondered if Richie saw something too. Maybe he’d drowned in his own way. The three of them share a look. A vulnerable look, sodden with the fear that made them feel eleven again, and the fear that what could be done when they were eleven could not be done again now. 

Mike lifts the mood with a pat to both of their backs. “It’s getting close to five. You want to grab our table?” 

“Go ahead,” Richie says. “I’m gonna grab Stan the Man here some new clothes since he looks ten seconds away from becoming a soaked Calvin Klein model.” 

Mirthful laughter could be heard from Mike as he turns on his heels and heads for the door while Richie gets a hand on Stan’s back and leads him into the parking lot. 

Still flushing hot from the comment, Stan flounders for a fitting comeback. He’s still adjusting to the banter. “You know a lot about Calvin Klein models?” 

Seeing the same puzzled expression on Richie’s face was a pleasure. Stan relished in it for as long as he could until Richie replied. 

“Well, Staniel, you’ve gotta have someone to keep you company during long nights.” Richie winks but the joke doesn’t land. The facade fell for an instant that took Stan’s heart and twisted it in his chest. Richie looked small, small enough that Stan found the answer to his question. Richie did see something. He saw something cruel enough to catapult him right back into the child he once was. 

Not one to skip around his words, Stan stops as Richie opens the trunk of his bright red car and unzips his suitcase. “You saw something.” 

“As did you.” Richie digs out a pair of jeans that look at least one size too big and then, to Stan’s fortune, a belt. “And by the looks of It, something saw you right back.” 

As he rifles around for a shirt, Stan pays extra attention to the set frown on Richie’s face. “What’d you see?” 

He doesn’t jump when Richie whirls around, eyes blazing. But he does wonder if prying was the right thing to do.

“Richie?” 

“I saw the clown, whataya want from me, Stan?” 

Richie dumps the belt and pants into his arms, topping it off with a grey hoodie. 

“I’m sorry, I-” 

“I’m not gonna make you apologize,” says Richie. “Making you change in a public parking lot is enough.” 

His face falls. “They have a bathroom in the restaurant, Richie.” 

“Wanna trail water all the way to there? You might as well just rip it off like a band aid right in the open. C’mon, I won’t let anybody see the goods!” 

“I can change in your car.” 

Richie rolls his eyes. “I bet driving here with a wet ass on a leather car seat was horrid, you really wanna do that again?”

He’s taking his defeat and the jeans when he looks back at Richie with a stricken look on his face. “How’d you know I have leather car seats?” 

“You just seem like the typa guy.” Richie waves a hand. 

All things considered, peeling off stiff wet clothes while Richie takes it upon himself to cause a distraction even though nobody was around really wasn’t that bad. Until it is. Until they suddenly have a voyeur whose voice sends a jolt though Stan so powerful his head snaps in the direction of the stutter that superseded time. 

“Ruh-Richie?!” 

_ Until it is.  _

“Bill? Is that you?” 

He’s ducked behind the car, fastening the belt on the jeans that were definitely over his size by a lot more than he thought. ‘One size’ his ass, they were more like three sizes. Richie wore his jeans baggy. 

Richie is hollering nonsense, perched on the trunk of the car. Stan can feel when he leaps off because the car shakes and the clothes he had balanced on the top fall off onto the ground. He cringes as he picks them up- now dually disgusting, wet and clustered with asphalt crumbs. 

By the time he had Richie’s hoodie on and he’s closing the trunk with his clothes in it, now swallowed by Richie’s attire, Richie and Bill are hugging not far away. 

So it happened that Richie became obnoxiously tall and Bill really didn’t grow at all. He was around five foot seven and his chin was barely holding its own atop Richie’s shoulder. Stan smiled at the sight and lingered there a few feet from them. They looked.. good together. Bill’s hair had become less of a dark brown and more so an auburn color that complimented the sleek black of Richie’s. The both of them remained pale, where Stan, thanks to Patty coercing him out of his office or out of the house, had become more tan than not. 

Bill moves back from Richie then, blue eyes still determinedly locked on Richie’s face. Stan sucks in a breath. Mike was in between different and the same, Richie was the same, but Bill was  _ different.  _ He still wore a green and blue flannel, but jeans rather than jorts which was somewhat a relief. Though he looked similar, he just- he was different. A stranger and a friend to come home too all at once. Stan wanted to get to know him all over again. 

“S-Stanley?” 

With a clumsy maneuver, Richie whirls them both around so he’s holding Bill against his chest and Bill is facing Stan. It’s too much, for a breathtaking moment, it’s  _ so  _ much to see the boy with the unspoken ghosts plaguing him, the boy who spread his arms around six other people who were left without hands to hold, the boy who lost so much and gave even more, and most strikingly, the boy who isn’t at all a boy anymore. 

“Bill,” he says. It catches in his throat and he takes some time to  _ breathe.  _ He breathes in the sea of blue, two pools of which are trained on him, before he’s speed walking into Bill’s arms. They are tight on his back as he buries his head into Bill’s neck, into his flannel.

Richie’s arms circle around them both. “Your h-hair’s wu-wu-wet.” 

“And you still stutter,” Richie points out before Stan has room to reply. Stan can just make out Richie’s chin in Bill’s hair. 

He feels Bill shake his head. “Actually, I haven’t s-stuttered in yuh-years, it st-started again after Mikey c-called.”

A silence stretches it and Richie obviously was equipped with a knife to cut it. “I read your book, Mister Denbrough. Pretty s-s-spooky.”

Bill rolls his eyes. “You cuh-came on my radio on t-the way here. How’s the t-tour going?”

Richie smiles. “I should be in Reno right now, man.” 

“It tried to drown me,” Stan says, fixing his hair that was starting to dry for the most part. 

He’s pale, Stan notices, as Bill’s head snaps back to him. But he doesn’t say anything, just takes the explanation. 

-

“Mikey-poo,” Richie calls as they step into one of the private rooms the restaurant offered- containing just a table and a fish tank. “Look what the cat dragged in!” 

What Stan doesn’t expect, walking with Bill a few strides behind Richie- the man had longer legs now- is for Richie to abruptly stop in the doorway, jaw dropped to the floor. From inside, Stan catches a gasp along with a clipped  _ it’s the fucking trashmouth  _ that absolutely has to be Eddie Kaspbrak talking, and then a feminine squeal as two arms wrap around Richie’s neck. 

Green eyes peer at him over Richie’s shoulder. Beverly Marsh smiles and warmth spreads in Stan’s chest. “Stan! Oh my god,  _ Bill?”  _

“Th-that’s me.” 

Richie is tugged inside by a man that looks vastly unfamiliar- he can’t be Eddie, but there’s only one other option left. Ben Hanscom grins as he pulls Richie tight into an embrace. “Rich, god, you’re tall. What do you do nowadays?” 

“Tell jokes for money,” Richie says. The sound of him and Ben could be heard as they take their seats. Eddie yelps in the background, probably at something Richie did. Mike laughs.

Beverly has run on and thrown herself at Stan, who catches her and smiles. “Bev, how have you been?” 

He sees her smile drop for a split second before it comes back twice as wide. “Fine,” she says. “And you, Stanny?” 

In lieu of reply, he just nods to communicate that yes, he was doing very well off. Bill grabs Beverly then, and holds her tightly. As anyone would hold their first love, Stan guesses. He doesn’t know why it hurts to think that. 

He walks in ahead of them. Uproar comes from Eddie. “Oh god, the only other sane one here! Stan, you’re sitting between me and Richie.” 

With an amused smile on his face, he sits down beside Eddie. 

“I see it didn’t take long for Richie to annoy you.” 

Eddie frowns. “It didn’t take long for  _ Derry  _ to annoy me. I saw the damn leper on my way here.” 

Stan nods gravely, becoming less freaked out when he figured it was more than just him being scared back to his origins. “I saw ‘im too.” 

It doesn’t take long for Bill and Beverly to stumble into the room, both laughing at something. They take a seat and a powerful feeling comes over all of them. The lucky seven are back together. It’s happening, but can they be so lucky as to escape unscathed like last time? 

Conversation comes easy- Eddie’s married to his mother, Stanley’s a boring accountant from Atlanta, Georgia, and Mike waxes poetic about the dozens of children who have already died.

It comes up that they’d all seen It on their way to Jade of the Orient, Mike excluded. Beverly was drenched in blood at a rest stop bathroom, Bill’s plane ‘crashed’ and he had to save Georgie, who had been a passenger beside him all the sudden. Spoiler alert: he didn’t. Richie refused to say much more about his encounter- only saying it took place at the park, and Eddie gushed about being chased by a leper in a pharmacy, to which Ben nervously laughed and told Eddie how ironic it was. Ben had told them with hands shaking so harshly he dropped his drink, about how his car broke down and how he’d walked the roadside path- lugging his suitcase all the way, until he abandoned it when Pennywise chased him, childhood traumas on hand, apparently. 

-

They drive to the Townhouse where Stan is stopped by a hand as he’s making to go to his room and get some sleep. It’s Richie, with round and scared eyes amplified behind his glasses. 

“I never rented a room,” he says. “Didn’t wanna waste the money on just a few nights, ya know? And-” He shivers, looking consciously behind him at the dark vacant hallway where the others had already departed. “Don’t really wanna be alone.” 

Stan nods in understanding. “If you’re asking me to stay in my room, you can.” 

Richie smiles as Stan lets him in, depositing his luggage at the food of the bed. He shucks off his leather jacket. With his back to him, he asks Stan “how are you so put-together? You’re so calm and ready, Stan the Man. I don’t know how you do it.” 

He freezes as he’s buttoning up his baby blue pajama shirt. “I’m not ready,” Stan says. 

While the both of them change into more comfortable clothes- Stan a matching pajama set and Richie sweatpants and a shirt that has his name and a set of tour dates from 2011 on it- a silence sets between them. It’s nearly suffocating because they both want to talk, but their words are held back by time, distance, fear. Naturally, it’s Richie who breaks the silence. 

“You think we’re gonna go down there tomorrow? Neibolt. The sewer system.” 

“I don’t know. I think we should. I think It’ll come to us if we wait.” 

A humorless laugh. “It already did.”

“But it didn’t hurt us, it will. Eventually,” says Stan matter-of-factly. He was drowned, but he didn’t stop breathing. He didn’t choke, and he didn’t die. He’d like to keep it that way. 

“Not physically it didn’t hurt us.” Now, a bitter laugh. And that, that was unusual. Richie laughed. That’s what he did. He told jokes and laughed. But he laughed bubbly and loud and sometimes silently, wheezing until he looked red in the face. In all the time Stan had known him, which wasn’t long anymore, but still, Richie had never uttered a sound that didn’t carry humor, that didn’t carry good nature and pureness of heart. This was something cynical and pained- something that ran deep, that ran through roots twisted and put to death. Stan knew those were the places where It took malicious hands and brought it into the fire, lit it ablaze, and made you swallow it right back down again. Stan knew that’s what must have happened to Richie- something personal.

He walks so he’s in front of Richie. The man takes off his glasses, rubbing at his eyes and probably avoiding Stan’s. “What did It say to you, Richie?”

“It gave me a nice warm welcome, Derry style,” Richie says, and Stan sees how it starts as a joke but dies somewhere in the bloodshot eyes beneath the glasses he put back on. Richie keeps talking. “It came down on red balloons, Stan. And it was singing this weird song- asking me to play games and telling me things that  _ weren’t true.”  _

“What did It tell you?” 

The bed squeaks as Richie sits down, a staggering sigh escaping him. “‘Told me It knew my secret, whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean.” 

Stan doesn’t claim to be a therapist, but he thinks Richie knows just what it means. He waits, silently urging Richie to keep talking and be more specific. 

“Told me not to ‘touch the other boys.’”

The power goes out. Richie falls back on the bed, kicking up the sheets and making a frightened noise. Stan jumps and backs himself into a wall. 

“Was that It? Is It here? Stan-Stan, what if we’re about to die?” 

He’s shaking, he’s sure of it. Stan can feel his teeth rattling against each other. Richie won’t stop talking. “We won’t Richie, we’re not gonna die. Let’s go find Bill.” 

But Bill’s already there. A fist pounds on the door and they cluster together- Richie at Stan’s back and Stan staring warily at the door. “Who’s there?” 

“Ih-it’s me!” 

Richie runs to the door and wretches it open. “Funny, Big Bill, we were just talking about you.” It sounds like a balloon deflating, and Bill just offers Richie a tight-lipped smile as he leads a very high-strung Eddie into the room. “Stay here, I’m gonna get the others.”

Before he can get far, Stan grabs him by the shirt collar. Bill turns around, eyebrow raised. Stanley gives him an apologetic look and pulls him close. 

“If you don’t come back in one piece, I’ll be really mad at you,” he says earnestly. 

Smile blooming on his face, Bill dashes out the door. 

A groan comes from somewhere in the dark. It’s Eddie. The man had flopped onto the bed and pulled a sheet over himself, trembling.

“I was almost asleep, and the heater stopped working, and I got so cold- it could have been hypothyroidism guys, it still might be- but then I swear there was somebody else in my room and I ran out and found Bill- his shower water ran out just as he was getting in.” Eddie makes a gagging noise. “He showers in hotels- eugh. There’s mold in there from who  _ knows  _ how many people.” A distinct  _ thump  _ comes from downstairs. “Oh god. Guys? Richie? Stan? What if Bill fell down the stairs?” 

“He’ll be okay. We need Ben, Bev, and Mike here,” Stan says, even though he’s not denying the slow burn of uncertainty in his gut. He presumed they had at least one night to get their bearings together. What a fool he’d been to think It would possess any mercy at all. 

The feeling of Richie’s hand on his back grounds him a little though. Eddie sighs and Stan just barely makes out Richie’s hand on his knee. “ _ Ghostbusters  _ my ass, the Losers Club are the ones doing the real busting.” 

“Not yet we haven’t,” Stan says darkly. 

Eddie shivers. “Think we’re gonna do it soon?” 

“We sure as hell won’t sleep with everything going on,” Richie points out. “Might as well kick the clown before it tries to tickle some other kid’s funny bone.”

“By ‘funny bone’ you mean ‘throat,’ right, Rich?” 

Richie snorts at Stan’s glum-sounding comment. “Let’s hope not.” 

Deafening footsteps thunder down the hallway. Within milliseconds, Bill is peeking his head through the door with a flashlight. “Thu-there’s n-n-nobody in here. I ch-checked every r-r-r-” He clears his throat. “Room.”

“Not even a doorman?” Eddie asks. 

“N-no. No one.”

“Wait,” Richie says, and they all know what he’s going to say. Their hearts all stop. “Where’s Ben and Bev then?” 

-

Mike’s driving since he was already in the car once the rest were ready. Bill had called him. Currently, the radio was chanting nonsense at them that definitely wasn’t radio hosts or music. It consisted of threatening phrases that apparently, Pennywise had told all of them.  _ You die tonight. You’ll float down here. Loser. Loser. Loser.  _

Richie turns it off. With his head bowed so they can’t see his face. He shakes his head at the radio. “I can’t take it anymore. I’m sorry.” 

None of them are mad. 

“It took Ben and Bev, didn’t it?” Eddie asks. 

“I th-think so,” Bill replies. Stan nods. 

They don’t say much more than that after the car turns. And turns. And they’re in front of the house where it all unfolded like a book with bloodstained pages they couldn’t put down. 

They see somebody sitting on the stairs. 

-

It’s Ben, with his head in his hands and his shoulders shaking, sobbing uncontrollably. When he sees them, he tries to speak but he can’t get anything out. Stan watches as Bill crouches in front of him. Ben flinches away and then looks up. He stares at them all for a second before collapsing into Bill’s open arms. 

Bill, ever their charismatic, fearless leader, holds him and rubs his back. “Hu-hey, Hays-s-stack, mind t-telling us what happened?” 

“Me and Bev,” he gasps periodically, still otherwise crying hysterically as Eddie sits down and leans against them. Stan still watches from a place outside his body, unable to do anything as Mike and Richie try to open the door behind Ben. It’s locked and from the looks of it, virtually unmovable too. “We were having drinks in the parlor and I walked her to her room and then I-It was on the other side of the door..” 

“Did it take her?” Stan asks. 

Ben nods. He wipes his face with his sleeve. “I r- I ran after them but the door, I couldn’t open the door.” 

Mike affirms this with a hum. He bangs at the door with his fist a couple of times. Negative. A similar grunt comes from Richie, a frustrated one. He rears back to kick at it, probably, but is interrupted by the wild giggles on the other side. He goes eerily still. Ben gets to his feet.

“I tried to get it open f-for so long, guys, I swear-” Ben hiccups and lays a weak hand against the door. Richie pats him on the back and Mike whispers something into his ear that none of them can pick up. “It’s behind it, I think,” Ben says.

-

It was behind it. They knew for sure as soon as the door creaked open slowly. To their horror, it simply stood there, red balloon in one hand and Beverly Marsh caught like a moth in the other. Her eyes go wide when she sees them all in the doorway and she shakes her head. 

‘It’s setting a trap?’ Stan mouths at Bill, who shrugs and makes his way between Ben and Mike, putting an arm out over Richie. 

They walk in anyhow, and It’s gone. So is Beverly. 

The way to the sewers is clear and the rope they left still dangles. Bill climbs down first, followed by a very frantic Ben, then Richie and Stan, backed up by Eddie and then Mike. Water piles up to their calves and it’s cold, cold, cold. 

Everything is cold, cold, cold. Their hands, all locked together lest they lose each other, are cold. The air is stuffy but so harshly cold that their throats burn. They trudge for what feels like hours. They lost warmth and clean clothes and probably a little of their minds too, but not hope. Never hope. 

Stan can’t see anymore. It’s all pitch black, but he feels Richie’s hand- and the rings around his fingers, right there in his own. Also, Eddie’s bruising grip and speculations about infections keep Stan present. 

Forevers wrapped and sent pass in the time it takes them to reach the room where they’d killed It last time. And like most of the unpleasant things in Derry, it’s exactly the same. Same stink that made them all choke, same glare of light from what they all knew were the Deadlights..

Being here feels like he never left. Stan can practically see himself through the eyes of an outsider- the same averagely tall, blond, pansy kid. He can see the lady in the painting leading him away, and he can hear Richie and Bill and the rest shouting his name as he was attacked. 

That was then and this is now, he has to remind himself as Beverly screams and he breaks into a run.

-

That was then and this is now, Stanley remembers as he knocks on his and Patty’s door, Richie and Bill in tow. A week had passed since he’d last been here, leaving as soon as the sun rose to make it to the airport. 

A lot can happen in a week. On the fateful night where they’d convened in the sewers, Beverly had seen the deadlights again. So had Richie and Bill, in the end. It had taken an ambush in which they all gathered ‘weapons’ and charged into the room when ready, to give them any advantage. Bill found a stick so long and large Stan found it worrying how it ended up inside a sewer, and he himself had unwillingly plucked an old pipe which he later tossed to Beverly because she, as it turned out, was far better skilled at fighting than he was. Richie stumbled upon his old baseball bat and Ben used blunt force. Mike and Eddie picked up pebbles and hurled them whenever they had the chance. In the unruly cacophony of seven traumatized, middle-aged losers bashing at a clown, they somehow end up coming out alive. It had been a laborious process- with several casualties including Eddie nearly being impaled, Stan nearly crushed between two boulders, and Beverly getting away with some minor internal bleeding. 

It had died surrounded by those who it had killed first. It had died with their hands squeezing the life out of its heart and throwing it so far they never heard it hit the ground. It had died and they had survived.

Back at the Townhouse, they took turns visiting Eddie in the hospital until three days later he returned with a wheelchair and a Mike Hanlon to roll him wherever he wanted to go. Ben and Beverly had taken their leaves first, giving them all a kiss on the cheek and some of the tightest hugs they’d ever received before they were gone for good in Ben’s house in Nebraska. They texted every day still. Mike and Eddie had been the second to leave. He’d told them one night how he found some land in Florida and Eddie had agreed to go with him. After all, Eddie had told them all how much he detested the idea of returning to Myra. 

And then there were three. Stan, Richie, and Bill stayed an extra day because even though they were the ones who for sure had homes to return too, they didn’t much want to. On their final night, huddled all in Stanley’s room, Bill had confided that he didn't want to go home just yet. Richie had respectively, confided that he’d quit his tour. Stan had told them both that he and Patty had a guest room at their place, and the two were welcome to join Stan on his flight home. 

Richie had enthusiastically agreed, beaming and dropping his glasses where he’d been cleaning them, whereas Bill had been unsure. 

It required some convincing, but after Stan, who didn’t want to lose his friends again, had told them how much his roommate wanted to meet them, they agreed heartily. 

In all her glory, Patty opens the door with her hair stuffed into a bun and her arms stuffed in the long sleeves of one of Stan’s old college hoodies. She stares blankly for a long, uncomfortable moment, but then it seems to dawn on her. 

“Stanley!” She throws herself at him and he catches her, taking in what he’d missed. The lilac scented perfume and the hug that’s so warm it knocks the feeling of  _ home  _ right back into him. 

Behind them, Bill chuckles and Richie wolf whistles. “You’ve been holding out on us, Stanny, you’re hiding a whole lady!” 

He turns around, smile on his lips. “This is Patty, Patty, this is Bill, and that’s Richie.” 

“Hi!” She waves. “He told me about you guys. So… how did the uh, reunion go?” 

Bill and Richie exchange wide-eyed glances. They both talk over each other. 

“Fine, we actually-” 

“-It wuh-was nice-”

“-went to dinner and had a completely normal meal without any-” 

“-and we got t-to know each other again a-after all that t-t-time apart-” 

It doesn’t take long for Stan to shush them. “We killed the clown,” he says. 

Patty pumps her fist into the air while Bill and Richie dissolve into uproar. 

“Yuh-you really t-told her?”

“What the hell?” Richie looks at Patty. “You’re okay with this?” 

She shrugs. “They staying here?” She asks Stan. 

“If you don’t mind,” he sighs. 

With a wicked grin, she opens the door and lets them all come in. “I don’t mind at all,” she says. “There’s only one thing I ask from you two.” 

“What is it?” Bill asks. Richie puts down their suitcases by the door and makes his way over to them. Stanley leaves to unpack while the three talk in the living room. 

“Embarrassing things about Stan as a kid, I need the blackmail for later.” She sits on the couch and makes room and Bill and Richie to sit as well. Bill collapses into the cushions, smiling. A  _ oh boy  _ comes from Richie before he sits, grabbing a pillow to put in his lap and to rest his chin on. 

Richie laughs. “He said ‘fuck’ at his Bar Mitzfah.”

Patty laughs, bright and bubbly. “Of course he did, were you there?” 

“Yeah, it was pretty rad. He called himself a loser and everything.” Richie wipes a fake tear. “About time Stan became a man.” 

“Wuh-we had a rock f-f-fight with some b-bullies as kids,” Bill starts, wheezing into his fist with laughter or perhaps an oncoming cold. “And Stu-Stan threw a rock and it landed at least a f-foot away from everything.” 

“Oh yeah,” Richie laughs now, too. “He couldn’t aim for shit.” 

Delighted, Patty laughs with them. “You’re telling me  _ Stan  _ got into a rock fight?” 

“Yes, and he got out w-with a bruise to s-s-show f-for it.”  
She shakes her head. “I can’t imagine that.” 

Richie nudges her. “You’d better believe it, baby! He’s mellowed out now but..” He trails off as Stan walks into the room, unamused look on his face and eyebrows raised.

“I what?” He asks. “Go on, Trashmouth.” 

Patty has risen from the sofa and stalked up to him. “You threw rocks at other kids?” She laughs into his chest and when he’s sure she can’t see, Stanley mouths curses at Richie and Bill, caught up in hysterics. 

“Don’t forget that he didn’t hit any of them, even once,” Richie adds. 

“Not true!” Stan points at them and looks at Patty. “I hit Eddie in the knee.” 

Bill throws a hand in the air. “E-Eddie was on our suh-side!” 

-

They made dinner together that night. Which meant, Stan making pasta while Richie and Bill flung sauce at each other and Patty played referee. It was an odd sensation- both of his worlds clashing together. And clashing together flawlessly, at that. Patty adored Richie and Bill, maybe even more so than she adored Stan. He doubted it himself, but it came close. 

It so occured to him that there wasn’t much greater a night than Richie showing off his Marilyn Monroe impression because Bill hit him with tomato sauce just where Monroe had her beauty mark with Patty’s roaring laughter in the background and Bill’s quiet suggestions and one-liners that made it all the more funny. 

“Hey, Earth-to-Stanley?” 

At Richie saying his name, he looks up from the pasta, where he’d been mixing in the butter for far too long. 

Patty kicks gently at his back from where she’s sitting on the counter. “You’ve been smiling at the noodles for at least a minute.” 

“Make it t-th-three.” 

“I think the ruckus gave me a brain tumor,” Stan says with a shrug. Then Richie shoves him and he starts to break out into a bigger smile. He tries in earnest not to read into it, but his eyes linger on Richie for a moment after the man has turned back to stirring the sauce. There was something inside of him growing fast and fruitless when he noticed Richie’s eyelashes were longer than he thought before, just shielded by the brim of his glasses. And also when he saw Richie’s lips part to make way for a hearty laugh at Bill’s expense when he slips and Patty hurries to help him up. 

Bill and Patty have an intense discussion about Bill’s novel while they eat and Richie and Stan stare at each other periodically as it ends with Bill putting his head down and muttering something about the unfortunate ending of the book. 

“Why was it bad?” Stan asks, going off from Patty’s harsh review of it. 

Bill swallows his mouthful of pasta. “I didn’t p-provide ‘closure.’”

“I mean, you never really got closure,” Richie says sympathetically. “Until now.” 

He smiles at Richie then, and a moment of faith passes between them that makes Stan happy just to witness. “My w-wife didn’t like it either, Patty, if t-that makes you f-f-feel better.”

Richie chokes on his water. “You have a  _ wife,  _ Bill?”

Instantly curious himself, Stan swivels over to stare at Bill, who had covered his face with his hands and started shaking his head. “God,  _ ex- _ wife, is what I m-meant, we f-fought b-b-before I left.” 

“Awh, hon,” Patty says quietly, reaching over to rub his shoulder. 

“It’s okay,” Bill says. “I s-saw it c-c-coming.”

Stan goes pensive. “Is that why you haven’t gone home?” 

Bill nods, staring solemnly at his fork in his food and fidgeting with it. Patty and Richie both look at Stan- Patty’s eyes round and full of sorrow for a man she’s only just met, which makes his heart warm, and Richie’s were small and downcast, which Stan would find interesting if it didn’t sadden him first. 

He reaches across the table to grab Bill’s hand. It’s a little smaller than his own, and cold and clammy, too. But he squeezes it and watches as Bill looks up to meet his eyes. “You can stay as long as you want,” Stan says. 

-

And stay they do. Richie Tozier successfully fixes all ties to his comedy brand by firing the person who used to write his material, albeit using Stan’s laptop the whole time, and Bill Denbrough writes out his newest manuscript by hand on one of Stan’s untouched accounting notepads before copying it onto a laptop he'd purchased. In the meantime, Stan goes to work, comes home, and spends whatever time he has free with them. It’s become routine. It’s become Stan, Bill, Richie, rather than just Stan, and that’s why Stan vows that he’ll never be glad  _ Derry  _ happened, but he’ll never wish it on anybody else but the lucky seven. 

The Losers Club regularly meets on skype, too. Eddie and Mike had decided to stay together in Florida, while Ben and Beverly have very obviously admitted their feelings for each other and become a couple. There hasn’t yet been a call where Ben stopped staring at Beverly like she made the sun rise every morning and honestly, it made Stan happy to see them like that. It ached a little bit too. He didn’t know why. 

But he figured it out soon enough. It came to him one evening when it was just the three of them alone, Patty out with some friends, as she did more often as of late. They were just putting down the computer after an hour and nineteen minute skype session with Mike and Eddie. Ben had been there, too, for a bit, until he had to meet Beverly for some romantic date. Stan was propped up on the pillows on the couch while Bill wrapped himself around the single large pillow they had much like a feline would, and Richie sat between them on the floor, an elbow balanced on each of their knees. 

“...and then before we all know it, there’s gonna be little Bennys and little Beverlys running around all over the place,” Richie is saying, still caught on the way Ben said Beverly’s name as he ended the call. 

Bill laughs softly, reaching down to move some of Richie’s hair out of his face. “Not thu-that s-soon, Rich. They’ve only just got t-together.” 

Richie shrugs. “Dunno, they’re just so  _ close.”  _

“Looks like a normal relationship to me,” Stan says. “Honeymoon stage.” 

That urges a laugh out of Bill. “F-for sure.” 

They lapse into content silence, until Richie abruptly gets to his feet and leaves, presumably to the bathroom. Stan doesn’t pay it much mind until ten minutes pass. 

“He drown in there?” Bill asks. 

“Let’s see,” Stan says, holding out a hand for Bill as he gets up off the couch. Bill takes it and they stumble across the bathroom. The door was already left ajar, but Bill kicks it open with his foot. 

Needless to say, what they saw was not what they expected in the slightest. There were dozens of possibilities- Richie got his belt buckle caught in the shower curtain, which had happened one very interesting instance, or he could have just grabbed one of the books Patty insists on leaving in there and gotten enthralled there. That was unlikely. What Stan and Bill actually saw was Richie sans his glasses, squinting at himself in the mirror and clinging onto the sink like his life depended on it. His shirt collar had been yanked up and down and was now dwindling awkwardly between flapping up over his neck or crinkling with the rest of his shirt. Richie didn’t seem to notice. 

“Ruh-Rich?” 

The man at the sink jolts. He smiles a little but it doesn’t reach his eyes. He still doesn’t look away from the mirror- only now he’s meeting their eyes instead of his own. “You know, I haven’t forgotten.”

Bill’s about to ask why when Stan figures it out. “Derry?”

“Yeah,” says Richie. “The nightmares come and I still see It chasing us and I still feel like I never left that fucking place.” He looks at his hands, white-knuckled, nearly the same color as the porcelain. “I remember everything.” Then comes the rambling, which Richie was known to do when nervous. “And there’s so many things I  _ do  _ want to remember- like you guys, and Bev and Eddie and Ben and Mike, but I was honestly operating on the basis that I would forget all the bad stuff- and I still haven’t. And everyone else looks so happy about it and maybe I’m the only one who remembers? Like, the lovebirds are going to god damn  _ Paris  _ soon and I’m stranded in casa de Uris with clown PTSD.” 

Stan lays a hand on his shoulder. “You’re not the only one who remembers.” 

“I st-still hu-hu-have the nightmares,” Bill whispers. “Most nights.” 

“Oh,” says Richie, eyes drifting to Bill’s in the mirror. Bill smiles reassuringly. “Is that why I find you on the couch every morning by the time I’m awake?” 

Bill shrugs. His smile grows into a grin. “It’s also b-because you w-w-wake up at eleven everyday and I wake up at n-nine.”

“Touche.” 

“You wanna talk about it?” Stan asks Richie because even though he had mustered a joke, he was still grasping the sink like a crutch and Stan was sure he saw tears gathering behind his glasses frames, glistening and unshed.

Richie rips his eyes away from the mirror as he turns to actually face them. “I’m a comedian, I shouldn’t bring down the mood.” 

Stan asks what the mood before had been while Bill barks out a laugh and says “then be funny.” That sends them into laughter. By the time they’re back on the couch, same positions, different thoughts, Richie is fidgeting enough to indicate he’s still bothered.

“I’ll bite,” Stan says. “Was it about what you saw in the park?” Richie stiffens. Stan keeps talking, even as Bill looks between them with confusion evident in his eyes. “It came down on red balloons and accused you of having a secret.”

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore, Stan,” Richie says, the most serious they’d ever heard him. 

Bill flips the remote into his hand and turns on a movie none of them listen too, caught inside their own heads running in a loop- a clown there and another danger there. They’d gotten away lucky definitely, but not scot-free.

The thought drifts to Stan when they’re all supposedly asleep. He’s in his room, tucked between beige sheets and patterned pillowcases, listening to a white-noise machine that really didn’t do its job. He switches it off, hearing Richie turn over in the guest room. Bill had claimed it at first, but after a week he offered to take Richie’s old spot- the couch in the office room, because it made him more likely to write when he had the time. 

So far, that served as the catalyst to Stan walking by and finding Bill with a computer shoved into his face during ungodly hours- eugh, the thought makes Stan’s eyes sting- and murmuring madcap questions to himself like  _ what shoes did the middle class wear in the 1840s?  _

The thought drifts to Stan when he wakes up, unable to lure himself back to sleep, and elects to take a walk. He passes Bill’s room- as the office had most recently been christened,- and doesn’t go any further once he does a double take from what he sees there in the light of Bill’s computer screen. It’s Richie, head resting on Bill’s shoulder with his hair fanned out over Bill’s neck and his jaw dropped, snoring off and on again as Bill types, sneaking glances at Richie every so often. Stan stands there for a while, admiring the two. Bill Denbrough, pseudo-older brother to all of them as kids and the bravest person Stanley’s ever met, and Richie ‘Trashmouth’ Tozier, the funniest by far and so full of heart that it manifested through constant movement and spiels that inevitably had laughter in their wake, both enjoying the peace and quiet and each other’s company. The sight made Stan soft. The sight made him feel warm and sort of lonely all at once. And the best part was that Stan found himself walking in, and he found a smile on Bill’s face that says the early morning hour was complete with Stan there, too. 

The thought drifts to him as he lays his head on Bill’s other shoulder. He sees on the computer that it’s just past five-thirty. He sees the greyish purple circles under Bill’s eyes and how Bill blinks, falls asleep, jerks awake, and then resumes typing. He sees Richie sniff, smile, and nuzzle deeper into Bill’s neck as if he’s found a reprieve from the fear that encapsulated him earlier. He sees the calendar in the slight dark- slight sun rising and leftover moonlight outside the blinded window, and notices that it’s Saturday and he can stay here as long as he wants. 

And he realizes, belatedly, that he wants to. He wants to stay here for a very long time. Forever doesn’t sound so bad- not when Richie opens his eyes and Bill whispers the most tender  _ go back to s-sleep  _ Stan’s ever heard in his life. 

-

Sunrise finds them all asleep in some sort of slightly sweaty dogpile- Richie’s legs hanging off the couch and his hand squashed between him and Bill, where Bill was in the fetal position with Stan’s head on his shoulder- still, and Richie’s on top of his own. The steady feeling of pins and needles irritates Stan’s limbs and he starts to shuffle into a seated position. 

“Psst.” 

He snaps his head back. Bill’s still out cold. “Richie?” 

“No, Richard, yeah, it’s me,” Richie says. “I changed my mind. I’m ready to talk about it.” 

“Right here? Really? We’ll wake up Bill,” Stan whispers back. 

“You’re joking. This man-” Richie sits up a little, too, worming his arms out from under Bill, who simply shifts with a small intake of breath. “-would sleep through a fucking zombie apocalypse.” For emphasis, or perhaps just to be a little shit, in Stan’s eyes, Richie pokes Bill between his ribs. 

“Rich no-” 

And then they both stifle their laughter as Bill makes a small noise in his sleep and rolls over. Stan watches Richie watch him with something in his vulnerable eyes- glasses nowhere to be found- that don’t have a name. If Stan had to call it anything, he’d call it love. 

He reaches across Bill to lay a hand on one of Richie’s. “Talk,” he says simply. 

Richie nods, takes a long inhale, and laughs. “I started to tell you back in Derry, before the power went out-”

“ _ Don’t touch the other boys?”  _ Stan had remembered just as he’d started to talk. 

Richie looks pale, but he nods again. “That’s it,” he says meekly. 

“Figured,” breathes Stan, making a  _ go on  _ gesture with his hand before it went back to lay atop Richie’s.

“Well, growing up in a no good, nothing town like Derry,” Richie begins, using his free hand to do jazz hands. Stan feels the other hold onto his. “You start to hate yourself if you happen to be outside of the criteria they want. I mean, Bill hated himself for his stutter because he was one of the smartest people but he couldn’t ever  _ do  _ anything about it- and so was Ben, but nobody would listen to him just because he was wider than he was tall. And I’m-” He swallows. Stan is pretty sure he knows what Richie’s about to say, but he wouldn’t dare to soil the monumental moment with his own suggestions. Richie swallows a second time, clearing his throat and wiping at his eyes. “Gay? Kinda gay, I guess. Bisexual.” He drums rhythmically on the side of Stan’s hand. “Derry didn’t like that.”

Stan smiles at him, almost laughs just from the sheer relief of hearing him say it. “Me and Patty have lived together for almost two decades now,” he tells Richie. “The one reason why I haven’t married her is because I’m gay.” 

Richie laughs, which is a good sign. “There’s that statistic, that one in four people are gay,” he says cheekily. “The Losers Club found their two.” 

“There’s seven of us.” 

Richie playfully swats at him, but stops to put one of his curls back into place behind his ear. Stan runs hot, fixated on the colorful and beady bracelets around Richie’s wrist and more so, the feeling of Richie’s hand in his hair. He remembers something else from Derry. 

When he returns to the bed after sorting through one of the drawers in his desk, Stan unfolds the paper he’d nearly forgotten about. The one from the synagogue. Richie watches intently, crossing around Bill to look over Stan’s shoulders. 

“What’s this?” He asks like he’s already read the paper, but hasn’t grasped why he’s being shown it. 

Stan soothes the wrinkles on the paper. “It’s a flyer for kids like we were. I found it in the synagogue when we were in Derry. It’s still less than desirable, but they’re learning to be better.” 

Unconvinced, Richie points to the messy scrawl in the corner. “Then what’s this?” His voice comes out skeptical. “Is ‘better’ telling us we’ll go to Hell instead of flat out punching us in the nose in the school hallways?” 

“Richie, it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks about it,” Stan says. “It matters what you do, and it matters to those who you love and who love you.” 

“God, you’re such a softie, Stanley.” But Richie looks more or less affected, what with the single tear under his eye and the infectious smile. He looks like a man who finally got to breathe, who was finally swimming instead of sinking. 

A  _ mrmph  _ sound comes from Bill. “Wuh-will you guys s-s-s-shut up?” He’s met with hushed laughter. “I l-let you b-both into my room and how do you p-pay me back? You don’t let me s-s-sleep.”

“ _ Your room?”  _ Stan sasses. “Last I checked I live here and pay the rent.”

Richie giggles, burying his head in Bill’s stomach and causing the latter to spasm and sit up. “N-not fuh-funny, Rich.” 

“Why are you so grumpy in the mornings, you dork?” Richie uses his height to his advantage and tackles Bill, who squawks and falls onto the ground. Stan surveys the scene with his eyebrows raised into his hairline. Bill protests and bats at Richie, who effortlessly keeps him pinned. 

When Bill does get free, however, his already gnarly bedhead had been ruffled into a whole other realm, and he looked akin to a raccoon rudely awoken during its slumber. Even Stan laughs at the sight. 

-

Patty had just bid them goodbye as she left for her latest excursion. Stan and Richie were engaged in a heated game of Scrabble while Bill was falling asleep at his computer. His manuscript was almost done- about six hundred something pages last Stan remembered Bill telling them, so he was on a mad dash to finish before the end of the month. Hence how he’d go on a writing sprint for six hours and then crash. 

Richie had come out a week and a half ago, and by proxy Stan had too. Personally, he was beginning to have his suspicions about Bill. There was something exciting in watching the fleeting looks Bill would give to Richie when the man performed his newest comedy sets for them- he’d been booking local gigs at the clubs- and danced around the kitchen while he made them tacos. There was also something  _ exhilarating  _ when Stan caught Bill looking at him the same way. And he and Richie, above all, had been exchanging those sort of looks since they’d come out, but Bill was a factor neither of them expected. He was also a factor they very much welcomed. 

None of those looks were happening now, as Bill had been reduced to staggering snores, head bowed and computer screen dark from the inactivity. 

“Y’think he’s gonna fall and his heads gonna smash the computer?” Richie asks. 

Stan moves a few of the letters, not really paying attention to the game so much as he was the opponent. “Shut up, I’m giving it five minutes until he wakes up.” 

A laugh from Richie. “I bet he’s dreaming of new ideas.” 

“Oh yeah?” 

“Yeah,” Richie says. “He let me read a chapter yesterday. It’s really good, Stan.”

“I never doubted it would be, he’s a famous horror writer for a reason.” 

Bill jumps, eyes trying to open and computer flickering back on. He looks at both of them. “How long wuh-was I-?” 

“No more than ten minutes,” Stan assures him. 

He nods and goes back to typing. 

Stan and Richie’s game persists. 

“Hey guys?” Bill keeps typing and Richie catches Stan’s eye, both preparing for a question they don’t know how to answer and one Bill should really be asking Google if he wanted to be wiser. 

“I’m into guys, j-just thought you s-s-should know.” 

That was not a question pertaining to Bill’s book. Stan’s head goes blank for a moment and Richie takes over. He crawls over to Bill and shuts his laptop. Bill stares down at Richie, lips pursed in confusion. Stan gets a feeling in his chest. Bill and Richie are both smiling at each other. The feeling in Stan’s chest was faith. He just knew. 

“Why should we know, Bill?” Richie asks.

Bill goes a little red, like he wasn’t expecting such a forward question. He coerces Richie away by opening the laptop. But he doesn’t type. He stares at the screen and when Stan and Richie stare at him, he, still red, mumbles  _ p-proofreading.  _

-

“That was weird, Stanley. I- I don’t even know-” 

“Richie, calm down.” 

“No! I creeped him out, there was  _ no  _ reason for me to do that and now I messed things up, god I’m such an-” 

“-Do not finish that sentence with an insult.” 

He stops talking; stops pacing, too. Richie stares at Stan with blank eyes. He receives a shrug from Stan and the accountant leads the both of them to sit on the edge of his bed. “I can’t help if you don’t tell me what’s happening,” Stan says. 

Richie falls back dramatically onto the pillows, staring admantly at the ceiling. “Hm, well, there’s two absolute dreamboats living with me, both of which like dick, and both of which I, uh.. like, and I don’t really know what to do about it considering I had one girlfriend over the years.” 

“Really?” That surprises Stan. Although Richie can come off as immature or heedless, he was still probably one of the smartest people even Stan knew. He would have thought Richie would have had a more flourescent love life. But compared to Stanley’s own, it wasn’t much better.

“And several hook-ups,” Richie adds. 

“Sounds more right.”

Stan is swatted on the shoulder by Richie. “Okay, mister. Advice, now.” 

He shrugs. “Choose a dreamboat.”

Richie grins. “No.”

Turning around with a puzzled look on his face, Stan eyes Richie. “So Bill-” 

“You  _ and  _ Bill.”

“Oh you really want everything, huh Rich?” But it’s hard to pretend when Stanley knows he wants them both just the same.

The man sighs and fans at his face. “I really, really do. What a pity. Gonna do anything about it, Stan the Man?” 

“I might as well.” 

Electricity fizzles in the air as Stan shifts so he’s fully facing Richie rather than being at an uncomfortable diagonal. Richie’s smile had fallen but just so that it was lopsided. His glasses were, too. Stan wanted to fix them. So as Stan’s hand finds Richie’s cheek and reels him in, his other hand props the glasses further up on his nose. 

A chuckle comes from Richie. Stan can feel the warm, outward breath on his lips. “Even right now you’re being nitpicky.” 

“You love it, Tozier.”

“I guess I do.” 

Richie’s lips are rough because he bites them. Stan doesn’t mind, really, because they may be chapped, but he sure knows how to use them. He feels a little dizzy as Richie’s hands go to hold his face. But Stan breaks the kiss to slap Richie’s hand away when he attempts to run it through his hair. 

“Why?” Richie asks, smile on his lips. They’re a little darker pink now. 

Stan takes Richie’s hand and plays with his fingers. “You’ll mess up my hair.” 

“That’s kinda the point,” says Richie, eyes glued to their interlocked hands. 

“It’s a moot point when I put product in it every morning,” Stan replies. 

“Oh dear, I can’t waste your precious hair gel, Stanny, the world just might end!” 

He brings Richie in for one more kiss. 

“Glad you understand.” 

-

Richie sleeps in Stan’s room that night. They both, much like eager teenagers the night before their first school dance, stay up into the midnight hour coming up with scenarios. As Richie said,  _ we’ve woo-ed each other, now time to double-team Bill,  _ to which Stan replied  _ think we should wait before taking that step.  _ It took Richie a second, but the both of them burst into laughter they had to muffle in the sheets. 

They spend more time in silence than Stan would have anticipated, with Richie. Admittedly, most of the quiet was because it was difficult to talk and make-out at the same time, but the parts that weren’t were admittedly nice. 

Eventually, Richie sleeps and effectively yanks Stan out of the slumber he’d been sinking into. 

“Stan, I don’t think you ever had to come out to me,” Richie says thoughtfully. 

“Oh?” 

Richie nods. Stan can just discern his silhouette in the dark- noise pointing upwards and lips left open just a little bit. “Yeah. ‘Think I just knew.” 

“What gave it away?” 

“You own a fucking diffuser and it diffuses fucking  _ lavender.”  _ Richie shakes his head. “Of course you’re gay.”

He laughs, startled by the joke but not affronted. “No, I’m just well adjusted, Richie.” 

A sigh. “Just wait until the three of us can squash Bill in here too- that lavender is gonna end his insomnia for good,” Richie says dreamily. 

-

Alone, Stanley could hide a secret so well he would end up taking it to his grave. However, keeping a secret not alone, and especially with Richie, to boot, he would end up tossing glares across the kitchen counter when Richie fumbled around Bill. Clearly, after Richie had been caught staring at him for the sixth time, Bill was starting to get an idea. 

“Wha? Do I have something on my f-face?” 

“Nope. Just those beautiful eyes, Big Bill,” Richie says cheekily. 

Bill snorts into his coffee. “If you insist.” 

Stan pointedly stares down Richie and the two engage in a battle of eyes over their toast and coffee. Bill was still groggy this early in the morning- since Stan had insisted the three wake up at his usual time today, and thankfully didn’t notice. 

He’d woken them up at this hour because he was given the day off for work and he and Richie had agreed they’d take Bill out and then pounce on him when they got the chance. Richie’s words. 

It takes them until noon to even get into the shower, though, and until three to get ready. By the time Stan leaves the bathroom, primly dressed in a cardigan atop his usual outfit, Richie and Bill were thoroughly enveloped in a game of Mario Kart. 

Stan frowns at them. “I can’t believe Patty thought buying that game was a good idea.” 

“You’re j-j-just s-saying that because your hand-eye co-coordination is s-shit, Stan,” Bill says through gritted teeth, shouldering Richie when he got ahead. 

“Woah, okay.” Stan sits on the couch, squeezing between them in order to jostle the controls and throw them both off. He snags Bill’s controller and sways him off course. Richie sniggers as a string of expletives comes from Bill. 

What he didn’t expect was for Bill to wrestle for the controller. That results in him being crushed against Richie while Bill makes futile attempts to wretch the controller from his hands. No hand-eye coordination, but a vice grip, Stan has. 

Stan loses and Richie shouts as he wins. Bill had gone limp on Stan’s side and to their collective surprise, stayed there once the game was over. “Sorry Staniel, demolishing Bill at Mario Kart wasn’t part of the plan but..” It dawns on Richie that Bill, albeit out of his vision, was still listening. And it shows in the blanch in his face when Bill makes a confused noise. 

“What p-p-plan?” 

The two meet, both fearful glances, Stan forgetting about the weight in his side and focusing on Richie’s bugged out eyes. Richie mouths something and Stan nods. 

“T’was supposed to be a surprise, Bill. We were gonna take you out to dinner tonight. Stan picked the restaurant and everything. You shoulda seen it- fancy as all hell with complimentary bread and everything.”

“Why?”

Richie’s opening his mouth around more words, but Stan beats him to it. “It was a date.” 

Finally sitting up, Bill gives them both a quizzical look, hair fallen into his face from him and Stan’s little skirmish. “If y-you’re gonna t-take me o-o-out on a date, you s-should at least tell me.” 

“Oh, Bill,” Richie says, batting his eyelashes. “I’ll keep trying, I’ll keep trying until I’m good enough for your love.” His voice had lept up an octave and Stan had to shush him with a smile on his face before he said something lewd, probably. But Bill’s smiling, cheeks a hint flushed. 

“You g-guys were serious?” 

Stan nods. Richie looks between them, hope flickering in his eyes. 

Bill trails a hand up Stan’s side and to his neck, cupping his face and Richie laughs. Whether it was from Stan’s eyes following Bill’s hand like it was a predator that would bite him or an oncoming quip about Bill having clammy hands, they don’t know. 

“Me and Richie both-” Stan starts, only to be promptly cut off by Bill’s mouth. Instantly, Stan’s hand cradles Bill’s face and he deepens the kiss. In the background, Richie makes faux gagging noises until Bill and Stan give him twin unamused stares. 

Richie simply holds his arms out and winks. “My turn?” 

-

“Okay, your t-turn, but please leave helpful feedback?” 

Richie snags Bill’s manuscript and puts a hand on his chest, sucking in a showy gasp. “What? Me? Leave  _ unhelpful  _ feedback?” 

Weaving between them with laundry, Stan says, in a horrible, nasally impression of Richie’s voice, “the word ‘fuck’ was used one hundred and sixty-nine times in this book, I counted.” 

“That was one time!” Richie laughs as Stan leaves the room. 

Bill looks faintly bemused, too. He shakes his head. “If you do thu-that again, I’ll p-personally kick you out.”

“You can’t do that, it’s Stan’s house!” 

Stanley reappears, sans laundry basket. “ _ We’ll  _ personally kick you out.” 

Pulling a sour face, Richie grabs Stan’s hand and Bill’s in the other. “Seven months strong and you decide to leave me for good,” he laments. 

“Absolutely tragic,” Stan says with a soft smile on his face. 

Bill smiles, leaning up to press a kiss to Richie’s cheek and Stan’s before he turns on his heels to leave. “Get ruh-reading Richie, I need t-to have that ready by next Tuesday and I w-want it Trashmouth and Stanley ap-p-approved.”

Richie smiles at Stanley as Bill exits the room. “That’s our little novelist, Stanny, growing up so fast..” he says, miming wiping a tear from his eye. 

“Incase you were curious, I already counted.” 

“Counted what?” Richie asks like he already knows. 

And he did. Stan taps the manuscript and leans up to press a kiss to Richie’s lips. “Bill said ‘fuck’ one hundred forty-three times in this one.”

“Christ,” Richie breathes. “You think he’s asking for something?” 

Stan bats him away as he leans in, wiggling his eyebrows. “I think  _ you’re  _ asking for something.” 

-

Bill’s next book is published early into the next year, under the title  _ Attic Room,  _ and after reading it, Stan refused to be in any room alone for a solid week. Bill apologized for the trouble profusely and Richie, likewise, read the entire book in a single night and didn’t sleep for at least three nights after. About a month later, mid-February, Richie gets offered a start-up tour again and Stanley gets a promotion. 

Skype-calls with the Losers Club continue, well into the news that Beverly is expecting and Eddie took his first steps out of a wheelchair. Life seems to be looking up. Richie’s internalized homophobia shtick grows to the size of a cigarette stub and Bill’s nightmares are combatted away by Richie’s late-night jokes and Stan’s stupid lavander diffuser. 

They’re all snuggled together on the couch, Bill brainstorming ideas for his next work, Richie revising comedy material, and Stanley dozing lightly across both of them. 

Well, Stanley waking suddenly against them, since Patty entered with the creaking of the door. “I’m home, Stan plus two!” 

She’d given them such a nickname when they’d announced their relationship to her, and truthfully, they adored it. Patty drops her bag and kneels beside the couch, amiable smile lighting up her face. Stan groans. 

“I know that look,” he says. 

“You do?” Patty asks, humoring him. 

Stan gets up onto his elbows, head resting on Bill’s knee. “You’ve got news.” 

Patty shrugs. “Maybe I do.” 

Richie laughs, leaning over to whisper something in Patty’s ear that makes them both share a grin. “Me and Patty are gonna make dinner,” he says, and gingerly slips out from under Stan’s legs. 

Mourning the warmth lost just a little, Stan sits up and adjusts to Bill immediately slouching into his chest. 

Dinner was soon irrelevant, as Patty stood up with her wine glass raised in something like a toast. “I’m moving out,” she declares. 

Stan snaps his head to her. “Why?” 

She nudges him with her leg and he nudges her right back. Bill and Richie exchange affectionate glances and turn their heads to listen. 

“Well, for starters there’s many things I’ve walked in on that I wish I hadn’t.” Cue the three guys to look down at the floor as if it’s the most interesting thing in the world, faces varying degrees of red. “And obviously, I picked up a girlfriend along the way that  _ asked  _ me to move in with her.” 

“Patty!” Richie exclaims, jumping up. Bill laughs and smiles at her, while Stan gapes openly. 

He urges her to sit down. “You never told us?” Stan asks. 

Patty looks sheepish. “There’s… sort of a reason why and it has to do with one of you.” Her eyes shift at Bill, who looks back at her dubiously. 

“Wait, you had a wife didn’t you, Bill?” Richie asks. 

Stan stays silent, having connected the dots based off of the widening of Bill’s eyes. He watches the scene unfold. 

“Wh-what’s your girlfriends n-n-name?” 

Richie snickers and offers a counseling pat to Bill’s shoulder as a knock on the door sounds. 

“Her name is-” Patty begins. 

“-Hello? It’s Audra!” 

Bill lets his head slam on the table with a thud. “Oh my god,” he whines. Stan gives a little  _ shh  _ and looks away from Richie, who is already laughing as Patty walks to the door.

-

It doesn’t take much to recover Bill’s ego, just for Stan to raise a finger in the air and grab a small box from the closet. 

“What’s this,” asks Richie. “You been holding out on us, Stanley? This your collection of-” 

Bill laughs, cupping a hand over Richie’s mouth and giving Richie a flat look when the other man licked his hand.

Stan places the box on the living room table, just where he had with Patty nearly a year ago. “No,” he tells Richie. But he opens it and knows exactly where the bell is. Stan removes it with care and tells Bill to open his hands. 

“Get your sausage fingers off me,” Richie says, shoving Bill’s hands off. Bill does, and holds his hands out to Stan. He gives a peculiar look at the bell that is dropped there, going through several emotions until he determines just what the object is. 

He looks up at Stan. “You k-kept this?” 

The writer gives a few experimental rings, looking overjoyed when it’s as shrill as it always used to be. Richie falls onto Bill’s lap, reaching for it as well. He taps Bill’s thighs and gives him an adamant look. “Do the thing.” 

“What t-thing?” 

“Y’know,” Richie says. “The  _ thing.”  _

“Oh.” Bill sighs and takes a deep breath. Stan lifts his hands to his ears, knowing exactly what’s coming. 

“HI-YO SILVER AWAY!” 

Richie falls off the couch laughing while Stan gives them both death glares. He pulls out Richie’s old shirt and lays down next to Bill was Richie insists on modelling it for them both. 

-

Faith always came from somewhere and it always persevered, but there came a time where it finally landed. Faith landed in the form of a bespeckled comedian and a haunted writer. Faith traveled long and far under Derry, Maine, through the sewer systems where death lurked and monsters crept, and then through the bursting roof of the wretched house on 29 Neibolt Street, and it nosedived down into seven hearts that  _ made it out.  _ Faith continued when Mike Hanlon sent out invites to five of his friends to spend the holidays at his place, an idea brought up by Eddie Kaspbrak, who could now freely walk with the minor help of an arm crutch. Faith nested in the baby carriage Ben carried into Mike’s living room and the hugs Beverly exchanged with them all. Faith lept with joy when Richie Tozier rung the doorbell, Stanley Uris and Bill Denbrough behind him.

And faith stayed, burning brighter than the sun and more divine than the moon, in that room full of laughter and rejoicing. It was, above all, faith that kept them alive and faith that would continue to nurture the gardens they planted long after the incidents in their hometown. 

  
  
  
  



End file.
